Everything the country once trusted and revered is being tossed overboard at a pace that probably hasn't been seen since the 1960s.

Is it a cultural shift? Who cares ... that's a crusty old term that only the elite used or even understood. Let's toss it out, along with anything else we ever trusted.

Out with the old, in with anything else, as long as it's new and hasn't lied to us yet.

President Trump has fostered some of this thinking, but even Trump is just a sign of the times. He rose by pointing out what stand-up comics have known for years: The government can't do anything right.

It wouldn't have worked just a few years earlier. But now that Trump is in, it's hard to imagine anyone running on the bland old promise that government will somehow figure it all out and make things better. To those who say Trump hasn't done all that much, the rejoinder is that he's done plenty by showing how shoddy the government's work product has been.

Trump laughed off and then abandoned the non-binding climate deal, and the sun rose the next day.

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In Search Of History

Thanks to "bracket creep," the inflation of the 1970s pushed millions of taxpayers into higher tax brackets even though their inflation-adjusted incomes were not rising. To help offset this tax increase and also to improve incentives to work, save, and invest, President Reagan proposed sweeping tax rate reductions during the 1980s. What happened? Total tax revenues climbed by 99.4 percent during the 1980s, and the results are even more impressive when looking at what happened to personal income tax revenues. Once the economy received an unambiguous tax cut in January 1983, income tax revenues climbed dramatically, increasing by more than 54 percent by 1989 (28 percent after adjusting for inflation).